


Balneary

by oldcoyote (contrawise)



Series: Displacement Verse [5]
Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Crossover Pairings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrawise/pseuds/oldcoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine works too hard, but it's worth it. Steve finds his own way to make sure of that. Basically: my excuse to write excessively fluffy naked bath-time cuddles. Part five of the Displacement Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balneary

**Author's Note:**

> This AU Avengers/Glee crossover follows movie!Steve, who was frozen in late 1944 (age 26) and woke up in 2011, and an alternate Blaine, who's 24 at the present day and lives in NYC. Set post-Avengers.

It was late when they stepped in Steve’s front door, peeling off their jackets in the wake of a chilly fall breeze and ambling into the living room. Steve kept his eyes trained on Blaine’s shoulders where they were slumped with exhaustion, noticing his footsteps slowing into shuffles across the wooden floors.

“Solid crowd tonight,” Blaine said, cutting off the question Steve was ready to ask. “It was great.”

“I’ve never seen the bar so busy,” Steve agreed. “You were amazing.”

Blaine’s smile was sweet, but visibly tired, curling just one side of his mouth.

Steve met it with his own gentle smile and bright, knowing eyes. “You’re exhausted,” he said, rubbing a broad hand over his boyfriend’s collarbone comfortingly.  Questions could wait until the morning. “We should go to bed.”

“No, no,” Blaine waved his hand, “I’m fine.”

Steve cocked his head. “You worked a double shift,” he reminded him. “And then you played another open mic night. The fifth one this week.”

“I know. I’m tired, but… _wired_. I don’t think I could sleep,” Blaine said, leaning his weight against Steve’s warm hand where it continued to massage over his skin. His eyes fell shut as he talked. “I just have all this music in my head, the crowd sounds… I can’t turn it off.”

Steve bent to kiss Blaine’s forehead, brushing another hand over the nape of his neck and chuckling to himself when Blaine buried his face against his chest.

He tried not to worry about Blaine working himself raw; about the long days at college followed by work shifts or more café or club performances, the nights he’d come home barely able to stand. Living was hard in New York City, and Blaine had explained the importance of getting his voice out there, of being heard. _You never know who’s in the crowd_ , he’d said. Someday, Broadway. Someday, his career. The work was worth it.

Steve always held on to him at night, when his body was dead weight and almost comatose after twenty-hour days on his feet, and couldn’t help but notice the odd similarity between Blaine’s exhausted frame and the dirt-smudged, bruised bodies of his team after a battle. He wondered to himself sometimes how much more Blaine could bear, and then quickly mentally kicked himself for his own hypocrisy.

On days like this one, at least, where Blaine had been worked to the bone and then gone back for more, Steve took comfort in the fact that he would always be waiting to catch him before he fell.

Relieved at the thought, Steve sighed gently and kept rubbing at the base of Blaine’s neck, sparing a glance down the hall to the bathroom.

“That feels good.” Blaine’s voice came out muffled against the fabric of Steve’s shirt.

“I have an idea,” Steve announced suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“Stay here, I’ll be right back.” 

Blaine’s hands groped the air weakly when Steve pulled away, and his expression pulled into a scowl. “I didn’t mean _stop_.”

Steve chuckled as he loped to the bathroom, bending to spin the taps quickly and find the plug. “This will be better!”

“That’s some big talk,” Blaine called down the hall, and his voice softened as he said to himself: “Trust me, your hands pretty much trump anything else.”

Steve smiled, ducking his head and hiding his laugh as the water gushed into the tub. Sometimes Blaine didn’t realise just how good his hearing was.

“A bath?” The voice came from the doorway, and Steve realised Blaine had wandered in at the sound of the water.

“Heat will help,” he replied.

“You’re running me a bath.” Blaine repeated in awe.

“Us,” Steve said, checking the temperature of the water quickly with the back of his hand and standing to wipe it on a towel.

“Us? _Oh_ ,” Blaine’s eyes grew wide as Steve reached for his belt buckle.

“Hands and baths are not mutually exclusive,” Steve said, stripping off his pants and watching as Blaine practically melted against the doorframe. 

A soft blush crept over Steve’s face - the telltale heat on his cheeks that always came when Blaine was getting undressed. 

He had never paid much attention to his own body - it was always simply the rest of him, something to keep clean, a machine that worked at his command and allowed him to do what he had to. Even when it was sickly-thin, awkward and angled, he'd barely paused in glancing at his reflection while bathing or changing. It was a body, like any other.

But the first time he peeled Blaine's clothes away from his skin, the first time he saw Blaine spread out on his bed, sweat-stained and panting and completely bare, all of that had changed. Awareness had crept in, the realisation of what his body could do, or how it could feel, in concert with another person. The way their bodies looked when pressed together, sliding against each other, made him ache in ways he'd never imagined he could.

A part of him still felt awed at the sudden freedom to touch another person, to see another person stripped naked, flushed, and aroused. He couldn’t help but be stunned by the simplicity of undressing together in the bathroom they shared, and wonder as to how it could feel so perfectly normal, so calm, and still so wonderfully strange at the same time. 

After he’d settled into the cast-iron, claw-footed tub, Steve stretched out and rested back against the curve, watching the smooth and stunning muscles of Blaine’s thighs as he stepped in above him. The water was almost painfully hot, enough that Blaine winced as he settled between Steve’s legs and leaned back against his chest.

“Too much?” Steve asked, reaching for the cold tap.

“No, no,” Blaine said with a sigh as his body relaxed. “I like it this hot; it’s perfect.”

Steve relaxed and pulled his hand back, settling down deeper and letting Blaine rest back against him comfortably. He’d always loved the water just a little too hot after a hard fight; the pleasant kind of pain, the searing heat sinking into his bones and unwinding his body. With any luck, it would work just as well for Blaine.

For a moment Steve simply breathed, adjusting to the heat. He dipped his hands into the water, finding Blaine’s belly and brushing over it soothingly, working up his chest. Blaine’s head tipped back against his shoulder and he let out a soft, barely audible moan as Steve’s hands pressed more firmly down his sides, finding knots and working them slowly.

“This was the best idea,” Blaine mumbled, his eyes closed and head still thrown back. “I take back everything, it wasn’t big talk, it was appropriately sized talk. Best idea.”

Steve smiled to himself as Blaine’s rambling was punctuated with another deep groan, and he leaned heavily against the fingers slowly kneading into his back. 

The question rose up in his head again, and the soft song that came with it played close behind. 

“Did I imagine it,” Steve began after a moment of relaxed silence, moving his fingers up to Blaine’s shoulders and sitting him forward, “or did you sing me a song tonight?”

Blaine stayed quiet, and the trickles of water from Steve’s moving hands only made it more obvious. 

“Blaine?”

“I did,” he answered softly. “I wasn’t sure - I mean, I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“You could never embarrass me,” Steve said immediately.

The quiet pressed in again and Blaine lay back once more against Steve’s chest, guided by his hands before they settled on Blaine’s thighs.

“It was beautiful,” Steve said, pressing a kiss into Blaine’s hair and resting his cheek there. “It sounded like something from… a long time ago.”

“It follows me,” Blaine said. 

“It follows you?” Steve asked, brow furrowing.

“We were talking about it, back when we were - just coffee. You said new music can’t sound like music used to, even when it tries really hard, and I told you I’d find you a song. And then it - started following me. On the radio at work, in taxis, everywhere. It’s not even a brand new song,” Blaine chuckled. “It’s a few years old. Still, I kept hearing it. And every time I did, it reminded me of you. So I…”

“You played it for me,” Steve finished for him.

“I did,” Blaine said.

Steam rose in curls off the water, and Steve realised his arms were still wrapped around Blaine’s body, cupping his thigh and his hip, holding him tight to his chest.

“It reminded me of you too,” Steve admitted. “It sounded like music used to.”

Blaine smiled lazily, his eyes drifting slowly open and closed again.

There was a long stretch of quiet as they both grew still, breathing deeply and slowly under waves of heat and thick steam that misted over the mirrors. Steve’s gaze drifted to where Blaine's curls were sticking wetly to his chest, dark against his pale skin and glossy in the bathroom light. A soft hum from Blaine caught his attention, and he squeezed his body gently to remind him he was there and holding on.

“I can’t fall asleep,” Blaine mumbled, his voice so drowsy it was almost incoherent.

“And yet it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing,” Steve said, amused.

“Can’t… fall…”

“Why not?” Steve asked in a whisper to Blaine’s ear.

“I’ll sink.”

“No you won’t,” Steve told him, squeezing again. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.” He brushed his lips against Blaine’s temple. “Sleep.”

Another sweet, soft hum echoed off the bathroom tile, and Steve brushed his thumb over the swell of Blaine’s hipbone. 

“I love you.”

Blaine drew a sudden deep breath, and Steve realised a moment too late he’d spoken aloud.

“I love you too,” Blaine said in the same drowsy mumble. “Ohmgod.”

Steve stared down in awe at the man resting against his chest. “What is it?”

“Wh-” Blaine tried to speak, his eyes fluttering open and closed again in an aborted attempt to wake up. “What if… I don’t remember?”

“Remember?”

“That you said that,” Blaine whined softly. “I always forget what happened… right before I… fall…”

Steve closed his eyes, trying not to laugh and shake too much as Blaine drifted off again. With a soft sigh, he rested his head against Blaine’s crown.

“Then I promise, I’ll remind you when you wake up.”

_~ FIN ~_


End file.
